Genre
The best Contemporary Fiction books
Realist novels set in the present. Marriage, work, family, the texture of the daily life of the people the contemporary novel has chosen to take seriously.
45 reviews in this genre.
Editor's picks
Highest-rated contemporary fiction on the shelf
It
by Stephen King
It by Stephen King 1986 review. Seven friends return to Derry, Maine, to face the shape-shifting evil they fought as children. One of the great American novels about childhood and the past.
Normal People
by Sally Rooney
Normal People by Sally Rooney 2018 review. Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small Sligo town, attend Trinity College Dublin together, and orbit each other across four years of intermittent intimacy. The literary-fiction novel that defined the Rooney moment.
Anxious People
by Fredrik Backman
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman 2020 review. A failed bank robber takes a Stockholm apartment-viewing hostage. Backman's structurally most ambitious novel and the basis for the Netflix limited series.
Intermezzo
by Sally Rooney
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney 2024 review. Two Dublin brothers - a lawyer and a chess player - navigate grief and romance after their father's death. Rooney's fourth novel and her structurally most ambitious yet.
Baumgartner
by Paul Auster
Baumgartner by Paul Auster 2023 review. A seventy-year-old Princeton philosophy professor a decade after his wife's drowning. Auster's final novel before his 2024 death.
Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout 2008 review. A retired Maine math teacher across thirteen interlinked stories. Pulitzer Prize 2009 and canonical contemporary American interconnected-novels project.
The Mothers
by Brit Bennett
The Mothers by Brit Bennett 2016 review. A seventeen-year-old in a Black Oceanside church community has a secret pregnancy with the pastor's son. Bennett's debut and the structural predecessor to The Vanishing Half.
A Man Called Ove
by Fredrik Backman
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman 2012 review. A fifty-nine-year-old Swedish curmudgeon plans his suicide until a young family moves in across the courtyard. Backman's debut.
Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett 2001 review. South American guerrillas take an opera singer and her audience hostage in a vice-presidential mansion. Orange Prize and PEN/Faulkner winner.
Erasure
by Percival Everett
Erasure by Percival Everett 2001 review. A Black literary novelist writes a deliberately stereotype-saturated parody novel that becomes a commercial sensation. The basis for American Fiction (2023).
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett 2019 review. A brother and sister exiled from their childhood home park on the curb across the street for fifty years. Pulitzer Prize finalist.
The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
The Vegetarian by Han Kang 2015 review. A Seoul housewife stops eating meat and the rest of her family disintegrates around the choice. International Booker Prize winner.
Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 2014 review. Three mothers at an Australian elementary school converge on a kindergarten Trivia Night where someone will die. The contemporary domestic-suspense novel that defined the late-2010s book-club shelf.
Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng 2017 review. Two Shaker Heights families collide over the adoption of a Chinese-American baby. The novel that established Ng as one of the major contemporary literary fiction writers of her generation.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid 2017 review. An aging Hollywood icon agrees to tell the true story of her career and her seven marriages, but only to an unknown journalist. The TikTok-era literary fiction novel that defined contemporary Hollywood-memoir-fiction.
Wonder
by R. J. Palacio
Wonder by R. J. Palacio 2012 review. August Pullman, born with a facial difference, attends a mainstream school for the first time in fifth grade. The middle-grade novel that became required reading in U. S. school curricula across the late 2010s and 2020s.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 2022 review. Three decades of creative collaboration between two video-game designers. The breakout literary commercial novel of 2022 and one of the canonical contemporary novels about friendship and work.
Beartown
by Fredrik Backman
Beartown by Fredrik Backman 2017 review. A small Swedish forest town stakes its identity on its junior hockey team. An assault by the star player splits the town. Backman's most ambitious novel and the first of the Beartown trilogy.
Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 2022 review. A Dickensian retelling of David Copperfield in the opioid-crisis Appalachia of the 1990s and 2000s. Pulitzer Prize and Women's Prize 2023 and Kingsolver's defining late-career novel.
Yellowface
by R. F. Kuang
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang 2023 review. A struggling white novelist witnesses the accidental death of her successful Asian-American novelist friend and steals her unfinished manuscript. Kuang's contemporary satirical novel about race and publishing.
The Vanishing Half
by Brit Bennett
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett 2020 review. Identical twin sisters from a small light-skinned Black Louisiana town diverge in the 1960s: one returns with her daughter, the other passes for white in California. Bennett's second novel and one of the canonical 2020s American literary novels.
Tom Lake
by Ann Patchett
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett 2023 review. A mother tells her three adult daughters about her brief romance with a future movie star while picking cherries during the COVID lockdown. Patchett's late-career literary commercial novel and the most-discussed Meryl Streep audiobook narration of 2023.
The Bee Sting
by Paul Murray
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray 2023 review. A four-POV Irish family novel about the slow collapse of one car-dealer family in the post-2008 recession. Booker Prize shortlist 2023.
Deacon King Kong
by James McBride
Deacon King Kong by James McBride 2020 review. An elderly deacon at a Brooklyn housing project shoots a local drug dealer in the face in September 1969. Oprah Book Club 2020 and the canonical contemporary American comic-literary novel.
Free Food for Millionaires
by Min Jin Lee
Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee 2007 review. A Princeton graduate and Korean-American daughter of Queens immigrants in the early-2000s New York finance world. Min Jin Lee's debut and the Pachinko predecessor.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 2019 review. A young Vietnamese-American man writes a letter to his illiterate mother about his Hartford childhood and the OxyContin crisis that takes his first love. Vuong's debut novel.
There There
by Tommy Orange
There There by Tommy Orange 2018 review. Twelve Native American characters converge on the Big Oakland Powwow. PEN/Hemingway Award 2019 and the canonical contemporary urban Indigenous American literary novel.
Transcendent Kingdom
by Yaa Gyasi
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi 2020 review. A Stanford neuroscience graduate student runs reward-circuit experiments on mice while her Ghanaian-born mother lives in her apartment. Gyasi's second novel after Homegoing.
It Ends with Us
by Colleen Hoover
Colleen Hoover at her most daring. A romance that refuses to be comfortable, and is more powerful for it.
Conversations with Friends
by Sally Rooney
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney 2017 review. Two Dublin college students become entangled with an older married couple. Rooney's debut and the structural predecessor to Normal People.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
by Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman 2017 review. A thirty-year-old Glasgow office worker develops her first adult friendship. British Book Award Book of the Year 2018.
Mad Honey
by Jodi Picoult
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan 2022 review. A New Hampshire beekeeper's teenage son is accused of murdering his girlfriend. The Picoult-Boylan co-authored breakout.
The Maid
by Nita Prose
The Maid by Nita Prose 2022 review. A neurodivergent hotel maid finds a guest dead in his suite and becomes the primary suspect. New York Times bestseller and the basis for the Florence Pugh film.
Beautiful World, Where Are You
by Sally Rooney
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney 2021 review. A famous Irish novelist and her Dublin best friend exchange philosophical emails. Rooney's third novel and the structural bridge between Normal People and Intermezzo.
Table for Two
by Amor Towles
Table for Two by Amor Towles 2024 review. Six New York stories and the Eve in Hollywood novella that continues Rules of Civility into 1938 Los Angeles. Towles's first short-fiction collection.
Pineapple Street
by Jenny Jackson
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson 2023 review. Three Brooklyn Heights heirs of the Stockton family navigate one calendar year. Reese Witherspoon Hello Sunshine Book Club selection.
Dear Edward
by Ann Napolitano
Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano 2020 review. A twelve-year-old is the sole survivor of an airline crash. Basis for the 2023 Apple TV+ limited series.
Our Country Friends
by Gary Shteyngart
Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart 2021 review. Eight friends quarantine at a Hudson Valley estate across early COVID. Shteyngart's pandemic-era literary commercial novel.
Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus 2022 review. Elizabeth Zott, a chemist pushed out of academic research in the early 1960s, becomes the unlikely host of a hit cooking show. A debut novel that became the basis for the Apple TV+ adaptation with Brie Larson.
Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 2018 review. Kya Clark raises herself in the North Carolina marshlands and becomes the suspect in a murder. The best-selling adult novel of 2019 and the 2022 Reese Witherspoon-produced film.
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 2015 review. Four college friends in New York, slowly narrowing onto Jude St. Francis and what childhood trauma does to the rest of an adult life. Man Booker Prize shortlist and the most-discussed contemporary American doorstop.
Hello Beautiful
by Ann Napolitano
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano 2023 review. Four sisters in 1980s Chicago and the graduate-student basketball player who marries into the family. Napolitano's breakout literary commercial novel.
People We Meet on Vacation
by Emily Henry
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry 2021 review. Travel writer Poppy and her best friend Alex have taken one summer trip together for ten years. Two years ago the trip ended badly. Henry's breakout contemporary romance.
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry
by Gabrielle Zevin
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin 2014 review. A curmudgeonly bookstore owner finds a two-year-old left in his shop. Zevin's literary commercial breakout before Tomorrow x3.
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